Abe’s will offer a comprehensive selection of all natural products, with the best and latest in health, beauty, food, home and consumer goods with the ease and convenience of the most modern e-commerce services. The site aims to be a place for customers to find their favorite natural brands as well as a place to discover some of the newest and unique undiscovered lines, as well as “meet” the creators of the brands and gain knowledge about the ingredients, processes and stories behind these products.

In addition to being the source for purchasing all-natural goods, Abe’s Market will be the place and opportunity for up and coming producers of natural products to feature, market, and grow their brands. Abe’s will continually seek out new brands and welcome new sellers to the site. Additionally, the Abe’s Market management team led by co-founders Richard Demb and Jon Polin, who have their professional experience in both natural businesses and the retail environment, will help these newer brands gain exposure with natural retailers to establish distribution.

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The internet makes knowledge accessible, but at the end of the day it is about communications and connecting.  Global Green Links came to Mokugift, signed up to our corporate rewards program and became an affiliate in less time that it takes took us to figure out where to go for lunch.

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Parenting brings out the pragmatic and resourceful skills in everyone.  kajeet approached us with the idea of

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Concerned about your travel footprint?

Wallet a little thinner than you’re used to?

Whether planning to visit another state or country, house swapping is a great way to take a bite out of your travel plan footprint and save a wheelbarrow full of cash.

Ever wish you had a close friend living in every cool country you ever wanted to visit? Now you do, sort of. Home Exchange Now is a website that lets users temporarily swap their living quarters. Think of it as an international exchange program – minus the college coursework.

Users of the site pick a country, when they’d like to stay, and then search for like minded foreigners who’d like to swap houses for a spell. 

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Are you like millions of others who assume that an online business, just by virtue of being online, translates to having a lower carbon footprint?  If so, then you are in for a shock. Although this is a fairly common assumption, the truth is that internet powered businesses often have a higher energy consumption requirements than offline businesses and so might have a long way to go before they can become green.

And the situation looks like it could get worse over the next few years. Get this….

• According to the EPA, over the next five years, power failures and limits on availability will stop operations at more than 90% of data centers
• Gartner predicts that early 50% of data centers worldwide will have trouble finding the electricity they need to cool and power their computing equipment
• 97% of respondents in a new survey conducted by the Business Performance Management Forum (BPM) said that it was important for internet and e-commerce businesses to reduce their carbon footprint.

But despite this, very little action is being taken by online businesses to reduce energy consumption.

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The last few months at mokugift have been a great learning experience.  Last year we received some great feedback from our users.  In October we were building a new version that enabled people to choose which country their trees are planted in.  We also changed the art from a cartoon style to a 3D graphic model style.  The impact was interesting.  When mokugift first launched, people thought it was targeted to kids.  With the new art and features we were being considered for general gifting.  This improvement also changed the number of trees sent per gift.

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Government Help?

If you are a small business or want to sell energy efficiency products to a small business, you might think that a logical place to start is the US Small Business Association. However, I don’t think that the SBA has any special loan guaranty programs for renewable energy or energy efficiency purchases. Please comment below if you have had experience with any of the above financing programs or if you know of others!

Recently, the SBA did announce grants to specific small business development centers for energy efficiency programs. Although I don’t see any reference to financing, if you can qualify for a general SBA loan, energy efficiency improvements could be a good use of proceeds!

Another Federal government agency, the EPA, has a list of resources as part of its Energy Star for Small Business program. When I clicked on “California” I received this list, which includes some lenders.

If your business wants to sell energy efficiency products or services to homeowners, then you’ll be happy to see an increasing number of related loan products for homeowners. For a number of years there has been an Energy Efficient Mortgage program, but I’ve heard that is hasn’t been very popular with banks and homeowners. And now, In the northeast, there is a pilot program for a promising-sounding Energy Star Mortgage, which allows homeowners to finance energy efficiency retrofits with a tax-deductible interest payments.

Private Sector Financing Sources

Private banks are starting to innovate with “green loans”. One that was launched late last year is by Umpqua Bank and the Energy Trust for Oregon is the Greenstreet lending program is for installing solar energy systems or energy efficiency improvements. Businesses who are customers of Portland General Electric, Pacific Power, NW Natural or Cascade Natural Gas can apply for loans of $5,000 to $100,000 with a fixed 6.5% interest rate. There is also a program for homeowners.

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The reality is that consumers shop differently than they did 50 years ago and expect different things from your brand. First, consumers want to learn about your product on their time. Traditional push, top-down, or inside-out oriented marketing from the marketing department that interrupts a consumer experience is ineffective. Think TiVo, iPod, pop-up blockers. Sure, they’ll consume your media – when they want to – not when it is pushed on them. Why don’t commercials get TiVo’d during the Super Bowl? It is part of the experience, for some it is the most important experience, of watching the Super Bowl.

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Maybe the title should instead read “How to Fail at ‘Greening’ Your Business”. Often times companies seem to approach “green” or eco-friendly as just another product attribute that can simply be added to packaging or website to reach the “green” consumer segment. In the rush to be eco-friendly, and due to the typical structure of many organizations, the marketing team will take the lead of the greening effort and, in the interest of time & energy, they’ll create a brilliant plan to communicate “green” to a target consumer group, but no internal alignment.

The sustainability and marketing strategies of a typical entrepreneur are often times based on the same model - the shotgun approach. Typically, entrepreneurs start to think about marketing after at least 6 months of hitting the pavement, and then sustainability appears as part of a new “marketing plan” or is seen as some kind of charitable giving / community relations campaign. Sustainable business is neither part of a marketing campaign nor a community relations effort. Neither is it about shifting revenue, but rather how revenue is generated.

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You find yourself needing a warehouse, or needing a bigger one then you have. Maybe you don’t need a warehouse, but managing all the nittie gritties is extra hassle you’d rather not have. Or perhaps your customers aren’t just local anymore, and your carbon footprint is getting larger because of the shipping. What to do?

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So just what exactly is the future of the web? Below is a snapshot of some of the buzz surrounding what to expect from the next web.

(Image Credit)

Semantic Search – Well, I’ve read far too much about semantic search and to the best of my understanding it appears that they’ve taught computers to learn the meaning of words based on popular interaction. I could have very easily jumbled that definition so here are some more resources and how the folks over at Truevert describe it.

“Truevert is a truly semantic search engine. Truevert learns the meaning of words directly from the documents that it reads. It does not rely on a prebuilt taxonomy, ontology, dictionary or thesaurus or limit search to only a small hand-selected group of sites.”

And this new version of Truevert is “focused on green, environmental awareness. All searches are done from the point of view of environmental and social concern.” Looking for more on the new semantic web, and web 3.0? Check out Twine! and the links below.

Web 3.0 org.

CNET Article

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Think about how much you use. Think about how much a company of 50 uses. 500. To use supplies that are less impactful, or perhaps even eliminating the damage they typically do, has enormous potential.

It’s this thinking that led Gil Yaron, once a lawyer focused on shareholder activism and socially responsible investing to create Vancouver based FrogFile in 2006. In his work leading up to this, he saw that many companies were interested in greening their office operations, but they didn’t quite know how or where to do that. Then once they did know what they wanted to do, there wasn’t a place to get what they needed.

FrogFile seeks to be a remedy for this quandary. And yet, you might say, green office supplies seem to be everywhere these days, both online and in office supply stores large and small. What does FrogFile contribute, and how do they stand out from this growing chorus?

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Green businesses are particularly well-suited for consumer advocacy. Customers who shop from your company due to a shared concern for the environment and/or a desire to avoid toxins are likely to tell their friends about the benefits of your product or service. The flip-side is that they are also likely to be particularly vocal and angry if they feel you have betrayed your green mission.

Social media, primarily blogs, have greatly lowered the barriers for consumers to voice their opinions. They can easily advocate on behalf of a brand or take a company to task for bad service, misleading advertising, products that do not work, and more. And the title of Blackshaw’s book rings true.

The question for green businesses is are you making it easier for 1000 people to advocate on behalf of your business, and are you reacting quickly and authentically when there is a mis-step and a customer is unhappy?

We marketers used to say that a brand is the sum total of all experiences with a company–not just the product or service but the employees, partners, website, collateral, ads, service centers, etc.

Your Google ranking is part of your brand

Well, now, customer service discussions on blogs are now part of your brand experience. Blackshaw says,

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That’s what Adrian Desbarats, up in Prince Edward Island, on the far east edge of Canada, decided to do. Far from being yet another boutique green fashion site in an obscure location, Desbarats is about to launch a site with high ambitions: To make the buying of sustainable fashions an affordable, quick, painless experience, at great prices.

It’s easy to find expensive green fashion like Natalie Portman’s vegan shoe line and other such boutique items, or on the other side, hippy skewed hempwear. But what if you want fashion for the more everyday, that looks good, wears well, and is reasonably priced? This is where Fashion & Earth aims to fit.

Now the question that came to my mind is, isn’t there other sites out there that do just that? Desbarats was on the case, with a well thought out response:

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Not only does your web site offer you a chance to market your company, it’s also an opportunity to exercise your commitment to sustainability. One way to green your marketing is to make the web your primary advertising focus. Through e-mail newsletters, online ads, and promoting your domain name on all company correspondence, you can drive traffic to your web site and cover a lot of marketing ground without having to waste paper. Focusing your advertising efforts on the internet means less printed advertising, which means less paper waste and fewer pollutants released (the printing process and ink pigments create a lot of them).

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One of my favorite things about using the internet to promote my business is that it’s green and inexpensive (if not free). So online marketing and social networking is a great way to get your name out there without using any paper or creating any trash. A good way to start your foray into the world of online marketing is to first establish a web site for your business. This will often be your potential customers’ first impression of your company, so it will be an important investment in both time and money. Once you have a web site, networking through social media sites is a great way to promote it and drive traffic to your site. Online marketing is a strategy that’s becoming more and more popular among entrepreneurs, and thankfully it is one with minimal impact on the planet.

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But there are millions of ecopreneurial enterprises prospering throughout the U.S. and around the world. Perhaps you’re one, too.

So, we have formed a partnership with EcoSector.com, an on-line portal serving as a unique conduit for growing the green economy, offering opportunities to share video clips, feature photographs of products or services, and display blogs.

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All participants to the EU Emissions Trading Scheme ought to have submitted crucial data on their 2007 greenhouse gas emissions levels by 31 March. The greenhouse gas data would be sourced by around 10,500 companies involved in carbon trading and is an important factor influencing the market price of traded carbon.

But many of the parties failed to meet the deadline, which is why the EU authorities in charge of the information said they will release the data to the public at a later date.

Emissions data is of vital importance for market traders because it shows the level of demand for the instruments they trade. The data is seen as a benchmark number setting the appropriate carbon price.

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The two research houses put the LOHAS market size down at $209 billion. This number includes services as well as tangible products. LOHAS are determined by NMI and Nielsen as people who “have a meaningful sense of environmental and social responsibility and incorporates those values into their purchase decisions.”

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